


The Weight Behind a Blessing

by pokeasleepingsmaug



Series: Sihtric Elflaedsson [5]
Category: The Last Kingdom (TV), The Warrior Chronicles | The Saxon Stories - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Friendship, Male/Male Friendship - Freeform, Nightmares, they're just so pure, traumatic past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24072934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokeasleepingsmaug/pseuds/pokeasleepingsmaug
Summary: Sihtric may be a Dane, but Osferth is not the first Christian to bless him for splinting an arm. He has been free of Dunholm for a dozen years, but sometimes he thinks he may never truly escape it.
Relationships: Sihtric & Osferth
Series: Sihtric Elflaedsson [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/933489
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	The Weight Behind a Blessing

Osferth is not the first Christian to bless him for splinting an injured arm, although he is the ugliest, Sihtric thinks, smiling down at Baby Monk after he slips the sling over his head. It is such a small thing to bring back such memories. It’s been a dozen years since he set foot in Dunholm; sometimes he thinks he is finally free of it.

He dreams about that place for the first time in years, in the dark without a fire because they are still wary of pursuit, and scares himself and the rest of the men into wakefulness when he shouts in his sleep. For the first time since he came into his service, Sihtric is too ashamed to meet Uhtred's eyes. Uhtred, too lost in grief, doesn't notice, nor does Finan, too worried about Uhtred's grief. 

But Osferth does. Bastards are the most observant of them all. Sihtric should know. "Dunholm?" Osferth asks, quiet in the dark before dawn, settling himself beside Sihtric. There is scarcely an inch between them, Osferth offering him warmth and comfort, but giving him the choice for distance, if he needs it. Sihtric has seldom appreciated him more. He squints at Osferth, checking for the sling, and finds it on his other side. He closes the gap between them, grounding himself in the warmth of Osferth’s shoulder against his.

Sihtric clears his throat against its sudden dryness. "I splinted my first arm there. She blessed me for it, too. Hilde." It hurts to speak her name aloud, to remember again just how much he loves her, how he longed to take her hand and escape in the night, to melt into the shadows and run so far Kjartan could not find them. And yet instead he only pressed a kiss to the sweaty hair at her temple and carried her to the kitchen. He was thirteen at the time, small and skinny for his age, but somehow he found the strength for it. “I found one of Kjartan’s warriors beating her.” 

Sihtric feels Osferth’s flinch. “And you stopped it?”

He nods, then remembers Osferth likely can’t see him in the dark. “Yes. She was the one who held me on my feet when Kjartan killed my mother.” The words feel like they’re coming from someplace deep in his stomach. “I was no match for a warrior, though. Not then.” 

“You aren’t now, either,” Osferth quips lightly. 

Sihtric smiles despite himself and digs an elbow into Baby Monk’s ribs. “I brought her to the herb-wife who worked in the kitchens. She showed me how to find the break and how to pull the arm to set the bones back.” He shudders, remembering the way Hilde howled to wake the dead. “Took three kitchen-girls to hold her still. I dreamt about her screaming when I set it.”

“That’s what you consider a blessing? Screaming? Have you ever set foot in a church?” Osferth’s voice is light, but his hand wraps around Sihtric’s forearm, shaking it lightly. 

“She blessed me later, when I brought her to her bed. This was after I’d already put the cattle back in their byre, so I stayed with her that night.” He remembers the feel of her warm back against his chest and the way he’d sent a prayer to every god he could think of in time to the rise and fall of her breath. 

“That is a blessing, though not in the Christian sense,” Osferth muses, stifling a yawn. 

Sihtric rolls his eyes, exasperated. “She did not bless me that way.” 

He lay awake so long that night, planning an escape he could never execute, that he slept through breakfast. But Hilde had woken him with kisses to his cheeks and nose and a loaf of fresh bread she’d stolen from the kitchens. Her smile had been something breathtaking, even with her hair tangled and falling from her braid, the trace of yesterday’s tears still on her cheeks. _Bless you, Sihtric,_ she’d whispered against his skin, planting a kiss just at the corner of his mouth. 

He’d barely had the courage to turn his head and capture her lips, but it’s a moment he’s carried with him ever since, locked and barricaded in the center of his heart. Sihtric loves his wife, and she is more than he ever deserved, but Hilde was the first person he ever loved who was not his mother. He will always carry a piece of her. 

“I loved her,” he admits with a sigh. He cannot admit aloud, even to Osferth, that he still does love her, that he knows he always will. But he thinks that Osferth knows, anyway. He always was the smartest of them. 

“And I am certain she loved you, and that you were a blessing in her life, as you are in mine.”

Sihtric sighs and leans against Osferth, the weight of the years lifting from him. The sky is already gray with the threat of morning, there is a shield-brother solid and warm against his side and memories in his head that no longer hurt, and maybe Sihtric is beginning to understand the weight behind a blessing.


End file.
